Saturday morning and the day is cold.  Early December’s days oscillate between mild  50s and frigid lows of mornings in the low teens.  Like life.  A shuttle between opposites…

This morning, a short drive from Batavia to the Geneva Starbucks a tune by AC/DC, Highway to Hell played on the radio.  The song, another description of the pendulum swing, — are there not many forms of hell?  Why bother to formulate a list?

Yesterday, while preparing holiday wreaths for hanging below the front doorway lamps, I stabbed myself in the palm with my penknife.  The wound bled.  The red of blood took me by surprise.  Blood, red, the substance and color of life.  Christmas’ color is red.  My wound ached.  Christmas like the cold of winter takes me by surprise.

More from Bataille:

All beings are fundamentally only one.
Beings push each other back at the same time that they are one.
And in this movement – which is their essence
–annul fundamental unity.

The repulsion is, in us,
what is fallen,
the stabilized element.
In isolation, stability is a disequilibrium, like every state.

***

… Happy to recall the night when I drank and danced
–danced alone, like a peasant, like a faun, surrounded by couples.
Alone? In fact, we were dancing face to face, in a potlach of absurdity,
The philosopher –Sartre – and me.

I recall having danced, whirling around.
And leaping up and stomping around on the wooden floor.
In a feeling of defiance, of comical folly.

-excerpt On Nietzsche by Georges Bataille, trans. by Stuart Kendall p. 79 & 81

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Enjoy the song, Songbird by Fleetwood Mac.  Christine McVie (1943-2022)

Songbird

By Fleetwood Mac

For you, there’ll be no more crying
For you, the sun will be shining
And I feel that when I’m with you
It’s alright, I know it’s right

To you, I’ll give the world
To you, I’ll never be cold
‘Cause I feel that when I’m with you
It’s alright, I know it’s right

And the songbirds are singing
Like they know the score
And I love you, I love you, I love you
Like never before

And I wish you all the love in the world
But most of all, I wish it from myself

And the songbirds keep singing
Like they know the score
And I love you, I love you, I love you
Like never before
Like never before
Like never before

Lyrics by Christine McVie